1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to 3D graphics accelerators, and more particularly, to a method, medium, and apparatus controlling 3D graphics accelerator voltage in order to control power consumption.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the image display field, 3D graphics is a technique for representing an image of a three dimensional object using three components, such as height, width and length, and displaying the image on a two dimensional screen. Typically, a 3D graphics accelerator receives information of a geometric shape as described by a shape modeler and applies components, such as visual point and light, to the geometric shape to generate an image.
A series of processes performed by the 3D graphics accelerator form a graphics pipeline. When the pipeline includes a slow process, the speed of the pipeline is reduced. Accordingly, the 3D graphics accelerator generally must perform each process in a given time, and thus receives power from a power supply to generate an image within the given time.
Recently, portable devices, such as portable phones, have been developed to display images using 3D graphics accelerators. Unlike desktop computers, portable devices need to operate at low power due to the limited capacity of their portable batteries. In addition, it is also necessary to maintain the performance of the portable device at or above a given level while reducing the power consumption of the portable device.